Construction and trades

From first call to invoice, every job in one place

An installation company gets one record per job, from enquiry and site visit to quote, schedule, work report and invoice, with a mobile app for the crews in the field.

Heating and cooling installer, 20 people

Jobs

Site visit 2

Family house, heat pumpVisit booked · Thursday

Office floor, ventilationWaiting for drawings

Quote sent 2

Apartment, two indoor unitsReminder due

Restaurant, kitchen extractionRevised once

Scheduled 1

Guest house, six roomsCrew assigned · materials ordered

Tools we typically use: Custom CRM or Pipedrive, React Native, Next.js, PostgreSQL, n8n, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, Your accounting software
Services involved: CRM implementation, Custom software, Business automation

The build at a glance

1record per job, from enquiry to invoice

4tools connected

2apps, one for the office and one for the field

1approval step before a quote is sent

The sector

An installation company sells a visit, a quote and a job done on site, and each of those happens in a different place.

Enquiries come by phone, email and through the website, often while the owner is on a roof. The quote depends on what was measured at the site visit and on current supplier prices. Once the job is won, somebody has to line up the crew, the materials and the customer for the same day. The work report and the photos come back from the field, and only then can an invoice be written.

Where the time goes

Enquiries were written in a notebook and in the phone of whoever answered. Measurements from site visits lived in photos and messages, so quotes were written in the evening from memory. The schedule was a whiteboard and a group chat, and a change in one job was not seen by the people on the next. Work reports were filled in on paper and reached the office days later. Invoices waited for those reports, and some extra work was never invoiced because nobody had written it down.

Enquiries are lost between the phone, the inbox and the notebook
Quotes are written late, from notes and photos scattered across phones
The schedule lives on a whiteboard that the crews cannot see
Paper work reports delay invoices and extra work goes unbilled

One system around how the work is done

Job finished to invoice

AppWork report signed on siteHours, materials, photos
CRMJob marked as finished
CheckExtra work compared with the quoteDifferences are listed
InvoiceDraft ready for the office

The office confirms the draft before the invoice is issued

01
Every enquiry becomes a job in the CRM, whether it came through the website form, the shared inbox or a call logged by the office
02
A site-visit form on the phone: measurements, photos and notes are saved to the job on the spot
03
A quote drafted from the visit form and your price list, which the owner or estimator checks before it goes out
04
A schedule board with crews, vehicles and jobs, visible on every phone, with the customer notified of the date
05
A mobile app for work reports: hours, materials used, photos and the customer’s signature, also when there is no signal
06
A materials list per job, sent to purchasing when the job is scheduled
07
The signed report handed to your accounting software as a draft invoice, with extra work listed separately

How the project runs

Four steps, one process at a time

01
Map the process
We follow a few recent jobs from the first call to the invoice, in the office and on site, and note where information was retyped or lost.
02
Pilot one process
Enquiry to quote goes live first, with the site-visit form, for one estimator and one type of job.
03
Extend
Scheduling and the field app follow, crew by crew, then the handover to invoicing.
04
Care
We keep the price list import and the integrations running, and adjust forms as the kinds of jobs you take change.

What changes for the team

Every enquiry has an owner and a next step
Quotes are checked and sent instead of written from memory
A schedule change reaches the crew and the customer at once
Extra work is recorded on site and appears on the draft invoice

A job is opened once and carries its measurements, quote, schedule and report with it. Crews see their day on the phone and send the report before they leave the site. The office invoices from signed reports instead of waiting for paper.

A composite scenario based on typical projects in this sector. It does not describe a named client, and the sample data is illustrative.

The same working day, before and after

What a few ordinary moments look like once the system is in daily use.

BeforeAfter

A customer calls about a heat pumpThe details go into a notebook and wait until somebody has time to call back.The call is logged as a job, and a site visit is offered from the estimator’s calendar.

The site visitMeasurements are written on paper and photos stay on one phone.Measurements and photos are entered in the visit form and saved to the job.

Writing the quoteThe estimator assembles it in the evening from notes and the supplier price list.A draft with items and current prices is waiting, and the estimator corrects and approves it.

A job is moved by a dayThe whiteboard is changed and the crew finds out in the group chat.The board is updated once, and the crew and the customer are notified.

The job is finishedThe paper report reaches the office later, and the invoice waits for it.The signed report arrives from the app, and a draft invoice is prepared for the office.

Questions from this sector

Our crews often work where there is no signal. Does the app still work?

Yes. The field app stores the report, photos and signature on the phone and sends them when a connection returns. The crew does not have to think about it.

Can quotes use our supplier price lists?

They can. We import the price lists you receive, in whatever form the supplier sends them, and agree with you how often they are refreshed. The estimator still checks every quote before it is sent.

We already use a program for invoicing. Does this replace it?

No. Invoicing and bookkeeping stay where they are. We pass the finished job to that program as a draft, so nobody retypes it.

Our installers are not keen on new apps. How do you handle that?

The field app has a few screens and asks only for what the office needs. We test it with one crew first, change what gets in their way, and only then roll it out to the others.

Can it handle service and maintenance visits as well as new installations?

Yes. Recurring service visits are scheduled from the installed equipment on each customer record, and the customer gets a reminder to book. They use the same report and the same handover to invoicing.